NOTICE: I will pose some questions to adherents of the three organizations that they may find uncomfortable. As I’ve have always said and will continue to say, believe what you will as long as it makes you a better person and your beliefs make you productive rather than destructive. My goal here is to provoke critical thinking and analysis of the subjects at hand. I just want people to know about things that affect their community.

This poem is written in a style that I call Triple Rhyme Time. In this style of poetry, I present information on three subjects/groups and the rhyme scheme is different from traditional rhyme schemes as every three lines rhyme instead of every two lines.

Some people like Davey Crockett and Abraham Lincoln are looked-up to with saintly reverance.

Perhaps we should remember that they had agendas and and are not as pristine as they have portrayed.

I’m a student of history and I’m going to explore three connected events in U.S. history: The Mexican-American War; militant abolitionist movements (Bleeding Kansas and Harpers Ferry); and the U.S. Civil War.

This poem introduces a new style where I present three events, people, or opinions. Also, every three lines rhyme instead of every two lines. I’m calling this style Triple Rhyme Poetry. So consider this a Triple Rhyme Time Poem.

Also, for your enjoyment, movie titles and book titles or hyperlinked to their respective pages on IDMB.com or Amazon.com.

Shiny, new pair of dimes is about changing old, dirty paradigms with new, thought-provoking paradigms.

I’m going to drop some history on you and you’ll notice that every three lines will be patterned in rhymes.

I’ll present historical events in this poem that is need-to-know information because these are changing times.

*******

New paradigms are necessary because we have to rethink how we think about and do things.

Critical thinking and analysis is so comforting because of the clarity it brings.

I’m just a truth-seeker that shares facts as truth gives you power like you were a Lord of the Rings.

*******

In this poem I’ll present three events in United States history.

To many, the behind-the-scenes stories remain a mystery.

Light will be shed on the dark shadows so put on your thinking caps and listen to me.

*******

The Mexican-American War (April 25, 1846 – February 2, 1848) was a warm-up for the future generals in the U.S. Civil War, you know.

Things go so much deeper than screaming, “Remember the Alamo!”

We’ll first talk about a few facts of Mexican-controlled Texas so here we go.

*******

Texas was owned by Mexico, but U.S. settlers were welcome to live there, but after 1830 slavery was not allowed.

The problem was slave-holders and slave-traders settled in Texas and became quite a noisy crowd.

Sometimes slaves would escape south of the border to live free and enjoy all of the natural rights that human beings are endowed.

*******

Slave hunters would try to recapture them but the Mexicans would not turn them over so they could become enslaved again.

This really pissed-off slavers and they had feelings of chagrin.

Fighting broke out against the Mexican government and eventually Davy Crockett and other rebellious Texans were slain by Santa Anna’s men.

*******

This was pretty much the event that sparked the Mexican-American War when afterwards the U.S. added Texas to the union as slave-holding state and also acquired the Mexican Cession [Sidebar — The Mexican Cession of 1948 added California, Utah, Nevada, most of Arizona, half of New Mexico, less than half of Colorado and less than half of the southwest of Wyoming.]

Hmmm… I wonder why when I was in school I did not get this history lesson?

That was a facetious question as I know that they were passed over in place of just more Lies My Teacher Told Me so there is no need for stressin’.

*******

Kansas was bleeding from 1854 to 1861 as the idea of it entering the union as a free state was met with much resistance.

The nation was divided over the issue of slavery, but the cotton gin made plantation slavery generate even more dollars and cents.

I am very disappointed to hear news that the only “democracy” in the Middle East, Israel, is behaving like South Africa under legalized apartheid or even Nazi Germany. Shame on Israel!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described African migrants in Israel as “illegal infiltrators” that threaten “our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.” Knesset member Miri Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, described refugees as “a cancer in our body” while addressing a mass rally that would shortly devolve into a riot targeting an African neighborhood in Tel Aviv. (“Israeli Racism Against Africans Proves Israel Is Not a Democracy”).

Write letters to your congressmen and your senators about this. Spread the word to churches that feel that they must go to visit the Holy Land in Jerusalem. Go to other holy sites instead until Israel gets its act together.

THIS IS NOT A CATEGORICAL INDICTMENT OF JEWISH PEOPLE!

I’m actually counting on Jewish folks like best-selling author Shlomo Sand to speak out against wrongs being done against people in Israel.

This poem is written in what I call a Haiku Chain. There are 16 haiku poems strung together to create this poem.

This poem is a series of 12 haiku poems that are strung together in a series to tell a story. According to Dictionary.com, a haiku is a major form of Japanese verse, written in 17 syllables divided into 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and employing highly evocative allusions and comparisons, often on the subject of nature or one of the seasons; or a poem written in this form. This poem introduces the reader to Agnoticism. According to Wikipedia, in some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the difference between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief. In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves there is a God, whereas an atheist disbelieves in God. In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is the view that human reason is incapable of providing sufficient rational grounds to justify knowledge of whether God exists or does not. Within agnosticism there are agnostic atheists (who do not believe any deity exists, but do not deny it as a possibility) and agnostic theists (who believe a God exists but do not claim to know that).

This poem has 12 verses – 12 haiku tied together to tell a story/present a message.

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